Animorphs 55 A Second Chance
by scifilover101
Summary: What if Jake could use the Time Matrix to stop the Yeerks from invading earth?


I woke up sobbing. I had ordered my own cousin to kill my own brother; my own cousin to kill my own brother! I was the murderer of the worst kind! I could have done the dirty work myself, but I sent my poor cousin to die instead of me. I had already been confronted with killing my brother and letting my father live; I had resolved to save my father at any cost. But when I should have made that choice, I had decided to not kill my own brother and had my cousin kill him. And in that way, I had killed them both. And the best part of me had died right along with them.

"Midget, midget are you okay?" _Midget?_ That's what my brother called me, and the voice called out with my brothers' voice. I opened my eyes, and I almost jumped out of my bed in fright. I saw my brother. But was a snake. I heard Rachel's voice coming from the China urn. I saw Tobias fly in, very aged in his hawk body. They all three in unison said, "Find the time matrix, Jake. Find the time matrix." And then, they all vanished.

I woke up sweating. I pinched myself to see if I was awake; it hurt. This was the second bad nightmare I had had tonight. The first was a nightmare that Ax had been captured and I had gone with Tobias and Marco to rescue him. Cassie and I were no longer in love in my dream. This made what I went through all the worse. Cassie was a very intuitive person; she always knew what to say to make me feel better. And ever since I had ordered Rachel to kill Tom, I had been going through something horrible.

I was relieved to see her lying in the bed next to me, an engagement ring and a wedding ring on her finger. _Think Jake. You're 25, not sixteen or 20. You have a nice job and you live next to Marco who works as a CPA. Ax works as a war prince and holds one of the highest ranks possible in the Andalite world. _

Tobias is dead; he killed himself from grief and old age three years after Rachel's death. I felt a wave of guilt wash over me. I had killed so many people that were close to me. I had killed Rachel and my brother. Perhaps that is why I dreamed of the time matrix. Should I go back in time and somehow prevent Tom from taking the blade ship and needing to be stopped? Or, perhaps I could go back in time to when the first Yeerk came and invaded earth and make it so that the Yeerks never found earth. Either one would be hard. Perhaps I should choose neither.

Too many hard shots! Too many hard calls! Why couldn't I just have led a normal, ordinary life? One that didn't require me to continuously make decisions. I buried my head in the pillow and wept. Cassie woke up. "Jake, what's wrong?" she asked with her light African American accent.

"Why did we ever have to be a part of this stupid war? Why us; we were just kids. But then, we had it taken away from us."

She kissed me on the top of the head reassuringly. "Go back to sleep, Jake. You'll probably feel better if you sleep." I only hoped she was right.

I called Marco the next day and said that I wanted to speak with him at our house. He came over in his bright red Ferrari. He had literally about 20 Ferraris and other nice cars. He was definitely living the dream life. I could have been much richer than Marco. But, I decided not to use the money for myself. After getting married to Cassie at age 18, she urged me to devote the money to charities. We still had a nice big house. But I only owned one Ferrari.

"Marco, Cassie," I said, willing myself to have the courage that I needed to say what I was going to say.

"Yeah?" Marco asked.

"Well…uh….uh…" I sighed. "Look, I had this one dream the other night that told me to find the Time Matrix and go back in time. I thought about it, and it sounded like a good idea."

Marco said, "OK, now you sound more insane than Ra…" He stopped, knowing that I felt guilt at hearing that name, even nine years after I had given her the orders that killed both her and my brother and ultimately Tobias.

Cassie said, "What do you want to go back in time for?"

"I want to stop the first Yeerks from ever coming here. Why did they ever have to invade us in the first place?"

Cassie said, "That sounds like a brilliant plan. But how do we find out who the first Yeerk was to invade earth."

Marco chimed in then. "This is so insane! We could be messing up history big time!"

"Marco, it would be a change for the better. Think of it, Tobias, Rachel, Tom, Elfangor, all alive. Never bothered by the Yeerks. We would all have the chance to truly be kids, without having to try to fight a war. Your mother…your mother would never have been made a controller."

Marco said, "You know what, that does sound like a good idea. Hey, I'd even give up my really rich lifestyle just to have all that. And I know who the first Yeerk was to come to earth. It was the original Visser One. However, what would be more helpful would be to prevent Loren and Mr. Chapman from ever being captured in the first place, considering that is how the Yeerks found out about humans."

I felt like someone had stabbed me in the heart. If Loren never met Elfangor, Tobias would have never existed. "Please…someone…make the decision for me," I barely gasped out, not wanting to make another hard decision ever in my life.

"If something goes wrong and destroying the two Yeerks doesn't work, we can do the hard thing," Cassie said, putting a hand on my shoulder. Marco and I both agreed with this.

The next day, I went and undug the Time Matrix from the place where Elfangor had hidden it. We punched in the date for the Middle East in August 29, 1990, the day Marco said that the first contact was made between the Yeerks and earth. We saw a Hork-Bajir in the distance and a Yeerk Ship. We morphed in our battle morphs and destroyed the Hork-Bajir.

Suddenly…I found myself as a thirteen year old kid again. I was walking down in the Construction site, late at night, even though our parents told us not to. I was with Marco Sanchez my best friend. My cousin Rachel and a rich kid named Tobias Fangor were walking home, hand in hand. They had met during a school meeting and fallen in love. Tobias was rich because he had a father named Al Fangor who helped Bill Gates, so he was insanely rich. I saw a girl who I thought was pretty named Cassie Miller and I talked to her.

We got home, and my father said, "You're late for supper; we're having your favorite, pizza." I got a cold slice of came and gave me a sly smile. "You weren't out with any girls were you." I threw a piece of pizza at him, laughing and quite content to be a kid.

Epilogue

Tobias grew up with Loren and Al Fangor. No one ever knew that Al Fangor was really an Andalite. Tobias was incredibly rich and that made him popular in school. He eventually married a beautiful woman in her 20's named Rachel Berenson and had two children and became brother in law to Jake Berenson. Cassie married Jake, and they had four children. Marco Sanchez became a forensic accountant and was quite good at catching criminals with his analytical, logical mind. Tom Berenson became a marketing executive and married a pretty woman named Ashley.

The End


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